EBay sales slowdown - what's your perspective?

[Whitey]

Blaming slowing growth in online shopping rates in the US, the firm said it expected sales of between $4.5bn (£2.8bn) and $4.6bn for the holiday period.

Shares in the company fell as much as 5% on the news in extended US trading.

The quarter is a key shopping period for the firm.
[bbc.co.uk...]
What is the general consensus of the overall e-commerce climate?

[RhinoFish]

Booming growth, mobile going crazy, ubiquitous reach.
And the economy's flatness is holding it back from being Bada Bada Babooming!
Working in this sphere is working in industries that are still segmenting, like an oak sapling, new branches forming all the time.

Analytics may be the latest boom, there are jobs galore for people who are even slightly competent or experienced.

But "slowing growth" has got to be true, but only because of the stellar growth rates seen in its infancy and teen years. Public companies that are young and sparking off, inevitably face a "slow down", you can't often sustain uber high growth rates, not unless you create a new industry that itself is growing (which they did). Holding a semi-matured, dominant company to a growth rate standard, might not always be a good way to judge a company, but stock pickers surely use it as a primary tool. They buy pimpled teens who are hot, and they sell 45 year adults who know how to weather storms through thick and thin. In a way, they're cougars. Hahaha!

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Ebay's partner network(EPN) affiliate program implemented a drastic reduction in cookie length for affiliates on Oct 1st, 2013. The new cookie length is 24 hours even on 7-10 day auctions and since buyers often like to wait until the last minute to bid the affiliates are out in the cold. Ebay's partner network blog and affiliate forums have erupted in negative comments since then.

Perhaps the increase in their take from their own affiliates is to offset this stock loss? Either way, losing a lot of affiliates has to hurt. The market seems strong outside of ebay, ad spending is up too.

[mrguy]

The new payment structure has killed this program.

Most affiliates were hit with over 90% reduction in earnings and some were pulling in more than 5k a month.

They did this right before the holidays to boost their bottom line however this time it's going to backfire because many affiliates are dropping their links.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I agree mrguy, don't use ebay's metrics as any sign of a market wide problem, ebay has just set off a firestorm of internal problems all on their own. I'd be very surprised if ebay doesn't lose significant traffic moving forward, you don't treat affiliates as poorly as they have at a time when you need strong holiday earnings. I spoke with a few of their bigger jilted affiliates and they are planning a migration over to Amazon so eBay's bust might be a boon to Amazon. eBay stock fell 6% and is below $60. Amazon is cruising at $300 and didn't suffer the same decline. eBay is pointing at the economy for their problems but nobody else is.

[super70s]

Good luck with that, Amazon takes a bigger chunk of affiliate commissions than eBay.

[mrguy]

Good luck with that, Amazon takes a bigger chunk of affiliate commissions than eBay.

Before that was true, however with latest change to the affiliate cookie by eBay it is no longer true.

The one day cookie for an auction site and their in ability to correctly track anything makes eBay the worst paying program of them all.

99% of the affiliates I know are dumping eBay for others that pay better.

Only the very heavy hitters can absorb the loss and continue making money with eBay even though they are still giving them a ton of free traffic to earn it.

If somebody was just getting into affiliate marketing today, I would tell them to avoid eBay's program completely.

[brotherhood of LAN]

They're probably feeling some competitive pressure from social networks too, those people are less likely to list/sell things on ebay when they have half the local population on FB.

Loads of localities have a [[locality] stuff for sale] page on FB where people are listing things for free and getting things sold.

I do agree about Ebay's aff structure not being useful to some affiliates. I was dabbling with it for a site for a couple of months and there were $500 worth of sales, but after a month EPC went to 0... regardless of the fact clicks were leading to sales. Didn't see much point in pursuing it further.

[mrguy]

I've made a ton of money from eBay over the years since joining them in 2008. My best month was over 25k in earnings which was a few years ago.

Then, when Goog wacked a lot of affiliate sites it dropped a lot. It still paid the mortgage and I didn't have to do a lot with it.

Then OCT 1st rolled around and the new payment structure kicked in and I'll be lucky if I earn enough to go out to dinner this month even though I'm sending the same amount of targeted traffic. By the end of the month, I will have removed eBay from all my sites. I refuse to send them free traffic.

Going to a 1 day cookie killed it for me as well as many others.

[super70s]

Before that was true, however with latest change to the affiliate cookie by eBay it is no longer true.

The one day cookie for an auction site and their in ability to correctly track anything makes eBay the worst paying program of them all.

And how long would you guess Amazon's cookie is for the traffic you send them? Yep, 24 hours (unless someone actually puts an item in their shopping cart).

Hey if you want to dump eBay over this latest change go ahead but don't get the delusion you're going to simulate your previous income with Amazon.

[RhinoFish]

My company is the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards, current "Affiliate of the Year"... as reigning champs, let me give you a tip. If you think a 24-hour cookie is killing you, you should see the tactics other Affs use to over-write your referral.

Cleanliness beats length, but length does matter.

That's what she said.

[Whitey]

Have Google's traffic related penalties amongst the affiliate network played into this?

Or has Ebay been benefiting overall from affiliates not being in as much of their marketing mix, for this to be discounted out of the equation. Thoughts?

[jadebox]

"And how long would you guess Amazon's cookie is for the traffic you send them? Yep, 24 hours (unless someone actually puts an item in their shopping cart).

Hey if you want to dump eBay over this latest change go ahead but don't get the delusion you're going to simulate your previous income with Amazon. "

The difference is that Amazon customers generally make their purchases immediately (or add the item to their cart) while most of eBay's customers watch auctions and bid at the last minute.

But, cookie duration isn't important. What's important is how much we are being paid for sending customers to the sites. Right now, Amazon is paying enough to make it worthwhile to advertise for them. eBay is not.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Actually the difference is that Amazon pays you a % of the total sale while ebay pays you a % of their fees on the sale. eBay lowered the fees at the same time!

I'd take 4% of a $100 sale all day long before accepting 6% of a $4 fee on that $100 sale. They did implement a 200% bonus on ebay if your buyer is a tier 1 buyer (new to ebay or not active in 12 months) but that's not something you can build for, it's pure luck(and rather rare).

eBay's current partner network program is one of the least paying in the industry now.